A Series of Moments
by nightlight's fire
Summary: Witness a series of events, moments if you will, that have the power to bring two people together. Spoilers up to 4x12, and probably more as more eps come out.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:**

****Before we begin A Series of Moments, I should tell you something. This chapter is in Espo's POV, and is essentially a prologue, despite being titled a chapter. This chapter is also in the past tense. The following chapters will be from a mix of Kate's and Rick's POVs, and will be in the present tense.

So, without further ado...

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><p><strong>A Series of Moments<br>Chapter 1**

_kbrc_

He'd been watching it build up, this tension between the two for years. Espo had sat and watched, mostly. Teasing Castle was part of the bro code and so excluded. He'd seen this thing between them way back when they started working together, and he still remembered those moments. Occasional little things that weren't really much of anything alone, but when you stuck them all on the same time line, each one signalled something much bigger than it normally would.

He remembered giving Castle the folder.

_Don't tell her it came from me_, he'd said.

_Don't hurt her,_ he'd warned. They were a family, Ryan, he and Kate. The three of them were brothers and sisters and a slight, even the slightest slight, against one was a slight against them all.

_I'm just trying to help_, Castle said. Espo remembered as plain as day, and when it happened, he swore it was innocent enough. He never pegged it, that act of sincerity from Castle as something that could drive the first wedge between Castle and Beckett.

That summer was unbearable. Castle gone, Beckett pissed to all hell, grumpy, grouchy, annoyed; the whole damn works. Solving a case with conspiracies and aliens was easier than understanding Beckett. Castle may say it jokingly every second poker night that she could turn up to, but that didn't make it any less true.

The next massive thing to happen was that wedding. Castle's old flame. He'd never tell the writer - friendship code prevented that - but Beckett was always real strange whenever he went around.

Of course, Castle had to kiss her. Kyra. He couldn't remember the writer's excuses. He didn't care to. They were irrelevant. What wasn't, in the grander scale things, was Beckett's reaction.

There's a reason films always shoot the reaction of a character. It's because three quarters of the good stuff is in the reaction. Beckett's reaction was typical.

Naturally, it being perfectly obvious to everybody except those two, they buried their heads in the sand and did next to nothing about what was between them.

Then there was that case. The first breakthrough, they called it. Sometimes. Not often. The assassin, the info that Castle had dug up coming to light. It was the turning point, Espo thought. He wasn't the only one.

At some point that they'd all missed, they'd become best friends. Kate and Rick. Castle and Beckett. They'd gone from platonic friendliness to true friendship. He offered up a hundred grand for a chance to help bring her closure. It should've struck him then, Espo mused, looking back on that day. It should have struck him that Castle loved Beckett. That Rick loved Kate.

Dunne came along. That case had been hard for all of them. Hard, dangerous, tiring, difficult. He and Ryan had their own mechanism for that, and for once, Espo was really, truly glad that Castle was there with them the whole way.

He was Beckett's crutch throughout the whole thing. When she was feeling the pressure, feeling the weight of their job bearing down upon her, he was there to pull her out before she collapsed, and bring her back in top form. Espo saw the looks they shared through it. No ordinary looks.

She sought comfort in him, and he sought comfort in her. Sometimes it was too easy for them to forget that she only had her Dad outside the precinct, and even that relationship was strained. And then there was Castle, who was her best friend. He could see it plain as day.

Castle was Beckett's best friend, but Rick… Rick was something more. Rick was whatever Kate wanted him to be. He saved her life, he helped her when she needed it, even if she didn't know it.

That was the system they had. Espo saw it every time something challenging came up. Rick was Kate's support, as much as Ryan's brotherhood was his. When she needed him, he was there. And after the Dunne case, when he needed her, she was there too.

Things, as they always do, got difficult. Demming. Why did Demming have to come along?

When Espo was being honest with himself, he admitted that he was silently rooting for the two of them. He even had a bet in the office pool going.

_Why do you think he's staying around? It's not for the books_, he'd said to her. _Not anymore_.

She'd looked at him.

He was right though, he knew he was. She broke up with Demming. And Castle had left with his ex-wife.

If the year before had been unbearable, this summer was enough worse. Beckett was in a funk the whole time. There was no Castle to cheer her up; to support her. For the first time in their partnership, Espo had seen true emotional pain on Kate's face.

It got even better from there. Beckett came out of her shell around Castle, and then hooked up with Josh. That annoyed Espo. There was the friendship code, but nothing trumped the bro code, and Beckett was leading Castle on. That's what it was. It was even more obvious that Castle loved her now than before, especially as the breakthroughs on her mother's case came.

He supported her. And she took that support for granted. Then she'd got shot. And Castle broke down. In the hospital, one memory is most vivid for Espo.

_I told her_, Castle had said to his mother. Esposito had no doubt in his mind what that was about. Castle had told her, and when Beckett had woken up and claimed to have amnesia, he saw the retreat into her shell again.

At the end of the day, there was nothing he could do, not really. He could just wait. Wait and watch as things played themselves out.

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><p>Read and review!<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

**A Series of Moments  
>Chapter 2<strong>

_We Live In A Terrible World_

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><p>The first thing he thinks when he wakes up is that he shouldn't be waking up. The tell-tale yellow of the street lamps outside, lighting the night, tell him that he shouldn't be up. His bleary eyes reading his alarm clock, a pleasant five in the morning, tell him he shouldn't be up as well.<p>

The one thing that tells him he should be up is his ringing phone. He doesn't need to see the picture of her on the main screen before he answers to know it's her.

"Castle. Body," her tone is short and succinct. No doubt a lack of her morning coffee, the 'heavenly brew' he brings her every morning. One day he has to take her to that little café near his place where he picks the coffee up. It has a kind of style that's hard to describe even with a writer's words.

"Where?" he responds. He hears her snort in the background, probably at the state of his voice. He wouldn't be surprised if it was.

"Lakeman Park. Upper side. I forgot the streets," she admits sheepishly. He chuckles, all raspy.

"Don't worry, Kate, you've just given a boy an excuse to use his toys," Castle replies. She is silent. The pause is lengthy. He thinks that she misinterpreted his words, and is about to make a gutter related comment, but she steps in.

"Have fun on Google Maps, Rick," she replies.

He ponders that for the rest of the morning. Where had the silence come from? He assumes it wasn't some kind of misreading, because Beckett would be all over that with her sarcastic voice and the eye-roll that was probably patented. But if it hadn't been something that he had said, then what had it been?

He eventually resigns himself to the assumption that it was either the fact he called her Kate, or she had seen something strange while she was on the phone. He didn't call her Kate often.

He showers, he changes, he grabs a quick bite and leaves a note for his daughter. He's all set to leave, and he is leaving. He's frozen, one foot outside the door. She called him Rick.

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><p>He walks through the grass, just a short bit to get to the footpath. There's a boat moored along the shore of the little lake, and the smell of smoke lingers in the air. The smoke of burning. He spots the techs all standing around something, Lanie crouched and Kate looking down. He can't see what it is they're looking at.<p>

"Hey, Beckett!" he calls as he walks over. She turns to face him, and he swears there is a moment of disappointment on her face. He's holding a coffee out to her. "Your usual, Kate."

A short, but noticeable, smile. So there are two mysteries for him to solve. The first is the obvious murder, and as he looks down, he realises that this will be a long case. The second is the not-so-obvious strangeness in the way Kate is behaving. The smiles and the silences.

"What do we have?" he asks. And then he says the body. Or what's left of it. The burnt corpse explains the smell from earlier. And the corpse is burnt. Completely. All of the body is charred, and upon closer inspection, most of the inside of the metal boat is covered in black.

"We have no idea. A jogger saw the boat on fire in the middle of the lake, called nine-one-one. Fire-fighters showed up and took out the fire and brought the boat to shore. Somebody called us," Kate explains. She doesn't linger for a second longer than she has to, turning back to Lanie.

"Don't look at me like that, girl, there ain't much I can tell you. First glance T-O-D is sometime after midnight. I can't give you an ID or C-O-D until I take him back to the morgue," she says.

"Right. Ryan, set up a canvas, see if anything interesting pops up," she instructs. Run of the mill operations.

"What about us?" Castle asks.

There's that pause again. He would quip if he had any kind of inkling why she is pausing, but it is eluding him. There's this understanding, sitting in the back of his mind waiting to be seen, but it's just outside of his reach.

"We get to wait. Have any plans for breakfast?" she asks. He looks at her.

"You didn't eat?" he replies. She looks down, and he can see the corner of her sheepish smile. "Let's go grab something. I know a place nearby."

"Yeah?" she asks. Almost eager. This is new, and strange. Good strange. There are two sides in him, one putting this eagerness away and calling it hunger, and the other, whispering in his ear that she wants to spend time with him.

"Yeah," he says. To everybody's surprise, he throws his arm around her shoulders and they walk off. To his surprise, she lets him.

There's a pause around the body, only Javi and Lanie left.

"Javi?"

"Yeah?" he replied.

"Constant updates, you hear me?" Lanie says. He nods. This new change in Beckett and Castle is too interesting for him to pass up as well.

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><p>It's late, and raining and cold and half of every other bad weather pattern that could possibly be. And she's soaked, half of it salty. His shirt's gotten pretty wet too, but he can't blame the weather, and the only thing he can blame, he won't. No way.<p>

"How can somebody do that, Rick?" she asks. They were curled up together, under half a dozen blankets and sitting in front of the fire. Not because they were cold. At least, not physically. Fire relaxes and warms and is all too often, the supreme provider of warmth when none can be found in real life.

"I don't know, Kate. I don't know," he says.

They'd cracked the case, but nobody had seen it coming. And it had shaken them, far too far for comfort to be of much use. When comfort becomes useless, something far more profound must take its place.

Kevin is with Jenny.

Javi is with Lanie.

And they, Rick and Kate… well, they're together.

The floodgates had shut.

"It's getting pretty late," she says after a time. It seems to pass without them, time. They're caught in their closeness, the warmth and the lingering horror of the day. But the warmth creates this feeling. It's a feeling that words cannot describe, it's a feeling that nobody can touch. It's the feeling that poets dream of, and musicians are inspired by.

"Who cares?" he replies. "The weather is too bad for you to be driving anywhere, and if you think I'm letting you out in it…"

"Letting me?" she responds. He isn't sure if there's teasing. Okay, he's mostly sure. She's too intelligent to miss such a blatant point.

"Yeah. Letting you. Everyone needs someone, Kate," he says.

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><p>It is early in the morning, and the rain has stopped outside. The only pitter patter one could hear now would be the remnants dropping into the puddles on the sidewalk, falling from soaked roofs, and dodgy drains. And, of course, the sound of somebody traipsing down the stairs, slowly so as to not wake anybody sleeping.<p>

And it is in this empty morning, devoid of the thunder of the night, that Alexis Castle finds her father and Kate snuggled together on the couch, near a fear that still flickered.

Watching this sight, she smiles to herself, and grabbing something to eat, disappears, leaving the loft quiet once again.

It is to the first ray of sunshine that Richard Castle wakes, and to the feel of Kate's hair in his nose that his senses come alive.

As he nuzzles her crown gently, and the early sun hits the window, the room is washed in pale yellow.

"I love you," he whispers.

He doesn't think she is awake.

"Me too," almost silent. Loud isn't amazing, and quiet is earth-shattering.

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><p><strong>AN:<strong>

I'm sorry for being absent so long, but I have about a thousand and a half things to do, and not nearly enough time. I've finally managed to pump this thing out, not sure how good it is. It isn't the least bit edited, so all criticism appreciated.

The next chapter will come much sooner. I just have a lot of writing and reading obligations outside of this that I have to attend to. And on top of all of those things, life in general is being really problematic at the moment.

Cheers,

Scarred Heart.

P.s

My name will stay as Scarred Heart from now on, dropping the twitchy raven.


End file.
